Some of the stories about class rank competition on these forums suggest cutthroat behavior.
However, Texas seems wedded to the idea of using class rank for admissions to its public universities.
As an AP teacher - admittedly of classes some of you consider “AP light” - I teach apush, Euro, World, have taught comp gov, and next year will be doing the disdained (by Cc) AP human geo (per student request) I find this thread fascinating, and disconcerting.
@ucbalumnus Could those with lower class rank also have been in stronger high schools?
THIS! my D has a 5.17 W GPA and a 4.0 UW yet isn’t even remotely close to being in the top 10%
Class rank may be rapidly growing obsolete, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are competing with classmates for spots at elite universities. Your teachers need to recognize you as one of the best/most brilliant students they’ve seen in their careers for LOR purposes. Your GC needs to see that you’re one of the most capable students in the class. At large public schools, racking up APs and gaining a valedictorian designation is an effective way to stand out from peers.
Taking a huge number of AP classes and/or being on pace to be valedictorian is unlikely to cause one of your teachers to “recognize you as one of the best/most brilliant students they’ve seen in their careers.” A teacher’s LOR is largely based on connections with that teacher – experiences in their classroom, performance on their assignments, personal connections with that teacher, etc… not number of AP classes taken or whether you are on pace to be valedictorian in the school’s unique weighting system. The OP mentioned that the GC at their school is pushing to take only the APs that truly interest students, so I expect ignoring the GC and instead taking a huge number of AP classes is also not the key to him giving a best in career type recommendation.
At our son’s HS, the (single) valedictorian is the person chosen to give the valedictory speech, not the person with the highest GPA, so even that marker is within the context of the HS.
As a person who also writes LORs, while I do have the kid’s transcript to look at - I have NEVER mentioned that they take bunches of APs. I do talk about passion - whether for my subject, or another. Also - everyone seems to be chasing the “one of the best most brilliant…”, designation from a teacher, by its nature- that is incredibly rare. I’ve been writing LORs for 17 years - have used something like it 2x. Most years, i don’t think the Val/Sal are the smartest kids in the class- (last year it was the kid who was #4), they are the best at playing the game.
Unfortunately I think this advice is much like the platitudes colleges spout about wanting students to take academic risks. Elite schools want students who have taken risk and succeeded; those who risked and failed, not so much. So until colleges prove they truly don’t care about the number of AP courses for the typical bright kid at public school, the race will continue.
Thanks for all the discussion. It has been helpful. My two older boys did compete in the AP race with different levels of success while attending a large and well thought of Public school. The question is only coming up now because that HS seems to be trying to change the way they look at the AP and race to be in the top 1% of the class.
My problem is that some will take the GC advice and others will push to still compete in the AP race. Which will create a situation where some who follow the rules may be disadvantaged because others do not.
The HS Administration is trying to address issues like student burnout and depression while still being known as a great University feeder. It is a tough issue. I don’t think there is an easy answer as there are kids (and their parents) that really believe the only way to be successful is to get into an Ivy level University and if they don’t they will be relegated to middle management. I believe that is the fable that needs to be addressed.
You do not need more than 7-8, here the adcoms are playing it straight. As long it’s as the right ones of course, apush, apcalc, ap language, ap chem, physics, aplac apcomp.
@toowonderful both my daughters took APHUG as freshman, loved it, and it greatly expanded their world view. Weighting or not, college credit or not, I am glad they took it.
@VickiSoCal - I’m looking forward to it. As I said, my school is adding it via student request, whether that is b/c kids are interested in subject, or looking for an “easy” AP remains to be seen. I just see it bashed on CC a LOT, and so I chuckle. TBH - teaching AP (at least teaching it well) is rather like parenting a teenager… people THINK they know all about it looking from the outside- but there’s more than meets the eye. That’s why this thread makes me smile
Euro is not considered an AP Lite by any stretch. OTOH, Human Geo, which is taken by a bunch of 14/15 year-olds…
AP human geography appears to be a very worthwhile high school course suitable for 9th-10th graders.
But college advanced placement? Seems unlikely.
AP Human Geo is a seniors only class at my kids’ HS. He was saying over the winter break that he thought it was one of the classes that really prepared him to analyze things in college.
I chuckle at the people that scoff at it. Only 28% of test takers scored a 4 or 5 and most likely received college credit (or tested out of a requirement). 21% scored a 3. And 51% failed it. That is abysmal. Why take an AP if you are going to fail the exam? It simply shows you are not up for college level work…now THAT is a strong message to Admissions. This rush to take more is just dumb.
@bluebayou - As fate (and my district) would have it, I teach AP Euro to a bunch of 14 and 15-year-olds, it’s the freshman honors option at my school. AP human geography will be taught to juniors and seniors. My score rates in euro are great though, it’s really at not as difficult a test as people make it out to be
Regarding AP human geography, 49.5% of test takers in 2013 were in 9th grade, according to http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/rtn/10th-annual/10th-annual-ap-report-subject-supplement-human-geography.pdf . Perhaps not surprising that many did not score that well.
@SwimmingDad - as for the high number of kids who take an AP test and fail it, please understand that in many public school districts, the school pays for the AP test fee. Many kids don’t belong in an AP class anyway, but there are plenty of kids who have coasted through all of school doing no work, and when told of the opportunity to maybe get an AP college credit for free, and it means they don’t have to be in the class with the disruptive kids, they say okay fine. These kids already know they are going to graduate and have serious senioritis as spring arrives (the time of year when young men’s fancies turn to …) so they don’t bother. The schools with more “disadvantaged” students tend to have high percentages of kids taking an AP class (surprise, they are paid for), but very low percentages of kids passing.
Also, AP exams are given at the same time of year for all test takers, so students whose school year runs from Aug-May will have had a chance to cover more material than those with a school year from Sep-June.
A friend is a teacher in an urban HS where this happens. She told me in the last 3 years, they have had only 2 kids score a 4 on APUSH test, and they have never seen a 5. They typically have 35-40 kids taking APs every year, and usually around 80% of them score 1 or 2.
@3puppies Well stated and understood. I actually work with urban school districts serving large numbers of high needs families. This is my world.
I get thrown by this open enrollment concept at suburban schools. My kids school requires teacher permission to enroll in an AP. At our former school in Pennsylvania it was similar with a little more flexibility. I think pushing kids is great, but AP is, in my humble opinion, often times less about deep mastery as pushing through a ton of content.
In our school AP Euro is almost exclusively taken by seniors and was very much taught like a college level course. The students also all got 4s and 5s. Perhaps one of the reasons the scores on Human Geography are so poor is because it is so often taken by freshman who aren’t actually ready for a college level course.
My younger son took AP World as a sophomore and I didn’t think he was writing like a college student. Many of the students who were doing quite well in the class did quite poorly on the exam. Many freaked out because the DBQ kind of came out of left field. I was quite surprised when my son got a 5. He said the teacher predicted he’d get a 2. (I also thought it was pretty unprofessional of this teacher to do predictions. Especially since it was the first year he’d taught the course.) Our school year runs to the end of June and that certainly doesn’t help the AP students.